pickled beets

My history with beets has been fairly limited until recently. In my youth, I caught a whiff of some canned, cubed beets and decided I did not like them. Years later, in my early twenties, I had a turkey sandwich topped with shredded beets. I found them completely inoffensive, and made a mental note to give them another try. That mental note was completely forgotten until I got a few beets in my CSA share, and I realized I was dealing with a vegetable that was all but foreign to me.

Initially, I focused on sweet recipes, because who can resist beets when they’re cloaked in chocolate or studded with poppy seeds? I also made a tasty batch of veggie burgers loosely based on this recipe, in an attempt to recreate my usual order from our favorite Ohio burger joint. At some point, I stumbled across the words “pickled beets”, and knew immediately it would be my next dish.

A lot of the recipes I looked at started by boiling the beets, but I elected to roast them– I already had the oven going, and I’ll take a roasted veggie over a boiled one any day. To prepare beets for roasting, cut off the stems and leaves close to the top of the beet (if you like, save the greens for later). Rinse the beets thoroughly and wrap them in foil. Bake in a 400 degree oven for about an hour, or until a butter knife easily cuts through to the center of the beets. I roasted my beets a day ahead of time, and let them cool in the fridge. When I was ready to make my pickles, I peeled off their skins and cut them into quarter-inch slices.

As I do with everything I cook, I read a lot of recipes and reviews before I got started. Lots of people mentioned adding hard-boiled eggs to their pickled beets, and I was totally on board. I imagined some purple-hued slices of pickled egg tossed with salad or arranged artfully on a tray with some antipasti. I also thought about the most probable scenario: me, standing in front of the fridge with a fork in hand, eating pickled beets and eggs out of a jar and trying not to leave a trail of fuchsia drops to the sink. It was then that I decided full size chicken eggs might be a bit unwieldy, and I used that excuse to visit a local Vietnamese market and pick up some quail eggs.

At a fraction of the size of a chicken egg, I knew they’d be perfectly bite-sized and easy to fish out of the jar. To hard boil quail eggs, cover with water in a small saucepan, and bring to a roaring boil. Cover the pan, remove from it from the heat, and let it sit for 5 minutes. Immediately rinse the eggs with cold water and allow to cool before peeling. I boiled my quail eggs a day in advance and kept them in the fridge until it was time for pickling.

Combine the first nine ingredients and half of a red onion in saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for half an hour. Allow the pickling liquid to cool, then chill overnight, allowing the flavors to develop.

On day two, strain the pickling liquid, discarding the solids. Slice the remaining red onion into quarter inch slices. Alternate slices of beet, red onion, and peeled, hard-boiled quail (or chicken) eggs in two quart jars. Fill jars with pickling liquid, then marinate for 24 hours. Keep in the refrigerator.

I had grand plans for these pickled beets, but rather than putting them in elaborate salads or elegant, open-faced sandwiches, I’ve found myself mostly just eating them straight from the jar. After going through a jar and a half, I decided I really needed to put them to use in something, and made myself a rosy-tinted egg salad sandwich by tossing in some diced beets and quail eggs. It was perfect between two slices of thick-cut white bread. It’s no antipasti platter, but the beets transformed a humble childhood favorite into something kind of fancy.